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The Foreshadowing Qiraji Battle Tank

So one day, almost two weeks ago, on Twitter I started a chain of omg’s and squeeing. It gave some of my followers a sudden OMG moment as they asked about the WoW Insider position. Had I gotten it?

No, I said at the time, no email to confirm that, sorry guys.

I was just squealing about how I was doing Archaeology for the lovely AFK-flying writing time I get out of it, and managed to have the Ultramarine Qiraji Battle Tank pop up in my Tol’vir solve window. It’s blue, my favorite color, and the AQ bug mounts are so bouncy and skittery and it just tickles me to watch the animations. I frenetically flew up Kalimdor, getting rid of all the night elf digsites, and utilized much of the use-your-hearth-in-Stormwind-plus-the-Uldum-portal shortcut trick to make the solving faster. I wanted the bug mount by raid time, and I put it all together (I have lots of keystones) well before then.

So now I have this really cool land mount. :D

But…why that post title?

Foreshadowing?

Was the UMQBT just the practice round of squeeing?

Mmmmmmmmmehbe.

Timeline of Blood Pact's reigning authors. Click for bigger image!

The next dayI got the email offering WoW Insider’s warlock columnist position to me and … it’s probably a good thing I waited until after raid to check my email. The rest of the night ended up with me running tight little circles and bouncing and clapping happily and squeeing, trying to keep it all in until it was official. It was rather difficult to sit still.

I kept it to myself since I figured either WoW Insider should get to announce it first, or I’d just jump in and we can have a party later. That was difficult, particularly because I wanted to thank my guildmate Lissanna for proofreading my application, as well as she & Malchome prodding me to apply earlier. Considering my guild is also spreading onto Twitter, I didn’t want Twitter to catch it too early, either. I didn’t want to spoil any big reveals if there were any.

I mean, it eventually got out to Twitter when an editor finished scheduling my first post. If I could sort my favorites on Twitter, that tweet would be up in there with the inspirational stuff that Self uses to kick the shit out of Depression. Then, of course, Anxiety pointed out that now the bar is set really high, and then Ego punched Anxiety right the fuck out for that comment. Yeah, you go, Ego.

A side note: I still find it weird when people who talk to me through the internet use my real name. I’m so used to responding to an online handle when I’m online that it takes me a second to realize, “OH RIGHT, I’M MEGAN, WHOOPS.”

What happens to Fel Concentration

Honestly, I don’t know quite yet what I will do with FC. I plan to keep fiddling with my own gearsheet through Mists and will put up versions as I feel like it. I plan to keep updating an Affliction 101 cheatsheet page, and maybe I’ll even add in the other specs. I plan to keep doing gear lists for patches, though that might get pushed into a Blood Pact.

Looking at other WoW Insider columnists who have or have had WoW blogs before, Blood Pact is where I need to be general-but-focused, form-fitting, and concise, whereas FC can be where I am my old informal, rambling, and verbose self. I need to explore and be aware of all the warlock specs and playstyles in Blood Pact. I can go off on my bear druid adventures on Fel Concentration. I need to confirm to style standards at WoW Insider while at Fel Concentration I can have as many run-on parenthesized thoughts as I want.

And colors! I can come back from the land of black and white text at WoW Insider to COLORS here on FC! :D And my emoticons and my not-actually-words like mmmmmmmmmmehbe and various dash-enabled run ons and sentence fragments.

I do know I can’t just recreate content in full on FC from BP or from anything I do on WoW Insider, and vice versa (just in case there is a legal difference between the me previously not employed by WoW Insider/Joystiq/AOL and the me that is now employed by them). I might plug my WoW Insider posts on FC, particularly if it’s of a patch news flavor so I don’t have to tread the line of double-posting, but I doubt I’ll do much of plugging FC on WoW Insider aside from the intro swipe under each column picture. (And even then, after people get used to my real name versus “Poneria,” I figure that link too will fade away in favor of an email link.)

In the end, I feel like I’m just picking up a dual-spec of blogging. There’ll be times when Blood Pact is what I need to be speaking through. There’ll be times when Fel Concentration is what I need to be writing with. There’ll be times where both are applicable. I feel that being a good blog writer will be a lot like being a good warlock: able to switch between the two freely while doing each well when needed.

Maybe drafts I can’t get to fit in WoW Insider’s scope, whether because of words or actual topic fits, will end up here.

I have a suggestion for an article if I could be so bold. A total noobs guide to playing a warlock at 85. Like the basic push these 5 (or 8) buttons thing and then end it with the how to make those 5 (or 8) buttons work better for you. A little hand holding for the people like me that have read everything and still feel lost or feel like I am doing it wrong.

In today’s world you can slam your head on the keyboard and level any character without any difficulty. No rotation is needed for that.

For raiding, if someone was really serious about it, they would at least have a serviceable knowledge before trying it.

Dungeons are where you work on developing that serviceable knowledge up. It is also the first time a rotation is actually needed. Once you learn “dungeon mode” moving up to “raiding mode” is a lot easier then just trying to teach someone “raiding mode” right at the get go. My opinion of course.